Friends and colleagues at iff, ladies and gentlemen,
The year is already well underway and my good wishes have only nine months left to go with you. As we all know, that time is enough to form a human being to the point where he or she can survive as an independent being in the world. This letter had a difficult birth and it was not until I read on our new www.iff-hamburg.de website that we write a New Year Newsletter annually that I decided to help this ”infant” into the world.
My problem is that so much outrages me. By now you should be receiving a letter which conveys the mellowness of maturity. We are living in the longest period of peace we have seen in centuries, we have democratic structures, an economy which feeds us and which allows us the freedom to be discontented and outraged without the threat of imprisonment or Berufsverbot[1]. You would have thought that, after almost 25 years, with international recognition even from people for whom we have been a thorn in the flesh, sufficient commissions and a host of committed young people, iff would have found it worthwhile for once to publish a document for which we Germans have the lovely word erbaulich[2], so close to our untranslatable ”Gemütlichkeit”[3]. But I just could not bring myself to do it. In the end, I came up with the title ”Resistance”, which I will try and justify below (paragraph 6 onwards), because I see it as a constructive element in our work today.
1. The fair question ”What about the positive?” is one which has troubled me since I wrote a German essay at school …
Further issues of this letter are:
2. Without resisting consumer protection will not persist
2. Resistance is also necessary for consumer protection.
3. Has outrage destroyed our dream of a bachelor study providing banks with training and education in the social economy?
4. Corporate Governance, a new alternative to consumer protection?
5. Commercialisation in the financial news sector brought us to the abyss in 2010 and threatens consumer information.
6. What is the difference between outrage in France and Germany?
7./8. German resistance in the 20th century was led by Jews.
9. Towards a fund in memory of David Caplovitz, to investigate indecent bank behaviour in law and social science.
10. Where we have got to at iff.
11. Arrival of new members of staff.
12. Restructuring
.